


The Loser's Dictionary

by beefwellington



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Love, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Snippets, Stanley Uris Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 15:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21273236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beefwellington/pseuds/beefwellington
Summary: him,pr.When he was thirteen, it was always from his peers, never Eddie, who called him anything but his name: Trashmouth, Bucky Beaver, class clown, an array of names Henry liked to throw at him that Eddie didn't like to think about.Over twenty seven years later, it's only Eddie's soothing voice saying: the love of his life, dear, sweetheart, his husband.





	The Loser's Dictionary

**amaranth, ** _ n. _

Eddie listened to Stan talk about his knowledge of flowers and plants that he had learned from Boy Scouts. They were walking back to their homes because, unfortunately for them, they were the only two in the group that actually tried to follow curfew.

"I know I said before that everything in the Barrens was poison ivy, but _that_ is undoubtedly poison ivy," Stan said and pointed to a small three-leaved plant growing out of the tree bark.

Listening to him, Eddie took a step back away from the tree, though every plant on the path looked like poison ivy to him and he felt something touch his ankle so he jerked it away quickly.

Stan pointed to a different plant, a pinkish-reddish flower dripping downwards, indifferent to Eddie's turmoil. "Amaranth," he started. "They're popular to plant for birds."

He watched the flowers rustle in the breeze; an unfamiliar twinge of desperation, a cry for help, as they swung back and forth.

"Also called Love-lies-bleeding," Stan added, reaching out and plucking a petal, letting it drop to the ground. "Let's hurry up. My parents are gonna kill me if I'm not back before dark."

The petal floated to the ground and Eddie snapped out of his reverie, nodding and stepping right on the spot where the petal landed.

**augur, ** _ n. _

Bev said she saw them all grown up, adults, unfathomably them. Eddie wanted to pry deeper, an urging curiosity about the unknown: What does he look like? Where does he live? Is he happy?

But Richie was already chopping cleanly through those thoughts, asked, "Am I handsome?" and squished his face with his hands. It was too much like him; to not care that Bev saw their futures and only saw an opportunity to make a joke. It made Eddie laugh, smiling despite himself.

In twenty-seven years, the same idea will be brought up, and it will make him afraid.

**blandish, ** _ v. _

"Eddie, you know that I don't like it when you hang out with _ them," _his mother said, blocking his route to his bedroom. 

"But they're my friends, Mommy," he said, an argument which he should have learned never worked with her.

"I want you to come straight home after school tomorrow."

Eddie twisted his hands together in front of him. He had only been hanging out with Richie, Bill, and Stan for a few days and already his mother thought they were bad influences.

His mother sighed. "There's a lot of sick people out there. I don't want to see you sick in bed, not able to go to school. Do you want that to happen?" she asked, and Eddie shook his head vehemently. "Good. Now, you come home right after school."

He nodded his head once then rushed past her up to his room. She never did find out that Eddie skipped his last class the next day to hang out with Richie at the park. 

**brackish, ** _ adj. _

The first day after Eddie is released from the hospital, he and Richie can't keep their hands off one another (much to the group's chagrin). And because this old fucking inn doesn't have a wheelchair ramp, Richie is the one to carry him into the living room.

"Out of breath, old man?" Eddie asks him when he hears him breathing hard. "Why not just get Ben to carry me?"

"Shut up. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Richie says, and Eddie can hear the others behind them mumble, _ at least they're back to normal. _

The inn is dusty, disgusting, and Eddie wants to get down on his hands and knees and scrub the room clean, but he pushes that out of his mind when Richie lightly places him on the couch and kisses his neck.

He knows the others can hear him moan because they're only a few steps behind him but he doesn't care. He's had to wait twenty seven years for this moment, he's not going to stop just because his friends are watching. He hears the front door slam shut as - Eddie assumes - they leave the inn.

Eddie kisses Richie's cheek, hands gripping on his back, as a tear falls out of Richie's eye.

"Oh my God, don't tell me you're going to cry after sex," Eddie says.

"Asshole," he mumbles into his neck, biting lightly and causing Eddie to shiver. "Can't cry when the man I've been in love with for nearly thirty years is fucking alive?"

He kisses Richie's cheek again, kissing away the tear (and, in a lust filled state, he does not think about how many skin cells are in that tear, or how many germs are in the body). "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think Stan likes you back."

Richie chuckles, but it sounds watery. "I guess you'll just have to do."

Eddie rolls his eyes. "You always were such a romantic."

**crave, ** _ v. _

"Eds. _ Eddie," _ he hears Richie say. He wants to respond with a _ don't call me that, _but he feels so tired. His eyes are slipping shut, an arm drooping down. He's being moved, shaken around, and he wants to yell at them to put him down, but the words don't come out.

The last thing he hears before he passes out is, "Don't leave me again."

**cagamosis, ** _ n. _

The first things he thinks when he sees everyone again in the Jade is that he fits in nicely amongst them, and not just because they were _ (are) _ childhood friends. It's more the fact that they are all unhappy with their lives, bar Stan of course, who just looks miserable because he's in _ Derry _again. Eddie can't really blame him.

And maybe it's disingenuous to compare himself to the others. Some of them seemed happier and way more successful than him. The others, not so much. In fact, he'd say he's firmly on the side with _ Stan _where he's happily living his life, repressed Derry memories and all.

Then he remembers New York City and Myra, and the fact that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce and that there's four married couples in this very room and Beverly has already stated she's filing for a divorce. Maybe the fact that Bill and Audra should be the happy couple alongside Stan and Patty make something in his stomach twist.

He will not think about this again until he's alone with Richie for the first time in twenty seven years.

**deleterious, ** _ adj. _

Eddie couldn't eat peanuts because his mother told him he was allergic and could cause his throat to close. He didn't question it.

Then he couldn't eat eggs because his mother told him he would get a rash. He wondered about the eggs he had been eating from the school's breakfast sandwiches, but he tried not to question it.

Then it was other foods off the menu: soy, gluten, raw sugar. Eventually it left him down to a small list of foods that his mother said he could have. She told him the doctors told her that.

Eventually, it wasn't just food: it was the water down by the lake, contaminated; the Barrens, filthy; his friends, even worse. _ They _were the ones who hurt him, let him play in that dangerous old house and let break his arm.

He wonders what his mother would think now, broken and defeated but _ alive, _dragged back to Neibolt by those same friends.

**desiderium, ** _ n. _

There was something about the man at his college, a freshman like him, that made Eddie want to get to know him better. Despite his shitty jokes and his penchant for being crude, he made Eddie smile. The feeling didn't go away when he slept with him; if anything it made it stronger, but their relationship eventually grew apart over the years.

When he meets up with Richie again, over twenty years later, he will understand why those feelings felt so misplaced.

**ephermeral, ** _ adj. _

This is what he would use to describe his friendships: a man in college, scattered friendships with his colleagues, any past relationship he tried to hold, and - worst of all - the Losers Club.

**evince, ** _ v. _

So maybe Richie never used the words "I'm in love with you, Eddie Kaspbrak" or even a "hey, I think I want to kiss you" _ but, _to be fair, neither had Eddie.

But it's obvious, isn't it? The way Richie went out of his way to make sure Eddie was comfortable, both in hospital and back at the Inn. Or the way his face lit up when Eddie opened his eyes for the first time. Or even now, the way Richie leans in to kiss Eddie's mouth with desperation, like Eddie might disappear again.

Sure, they don't talk about it, but they've _ never _talked about things. Why ruin a good thing?

**finalism, ** _ n. _

Eddie wants to believe that the fight is over. In the end, he traded the ability to walk (and a two week stay in the hospital) for Pennywise to be defeated. He's explaining this to Richie, sides touching one another, as they sit on the dirty beds at the Derry Inn.

"We did most of the work, though. You were just bleeding out in the corner," Richie says, and Eddie shoves him.

"I saved your life!" He points right at him, making Richie cross his eyes to look at the finger. "I almost died!"

"What's wrong, Eds, am I… _ ribbing you? _" Richie snorts, shouldering Eddie into the side.

"I went into shock, asshole!" Eddie exclaims, but there's no anger in his tone. They had plenty of time to talk about what happened while he was in the hospital and Richie was continuously at his side.

Richie laughs again, clutching his abdomen, and Eddie smiles at him. "Even Stan did more than you, and he showed up late!"

"If you like Stan so much, why don't you just go suck _ his _cock then?" Eddie asks, shooting him a cocky look.

"I don't think Patty would be all that up for a threesome with me." He wipes a tear from his eye again. "Wait, do you think Stan would be up for cuckolding?"

"Beep fucking beep, Trashmouth."

**footle, ** _ v. _

It was something Richie did all the time, but Eddie couldn't help but laugh every time, even when the joke was on him.

**galvanic, ** _ adj. _

Maybe Eddie shouldn't _ really _describe almost getting killed by an evil space clown as 'exciting,' but there is no denying the thrill he feels whenever he thinks about it. Almost dying after living his life wrapped in plastic made him feel like he could do anything.

But whenever he thinks about it, the final kill, Mike pulling Pennywise's heart out (as the others had explained to him afterwards in the hospital, while he was drugged and wide-eyed and hardly believing the story), it sends a shock through him: it happened, It was real, Eddie is alive to tell the tale - or a sober version of it.

**ghost, ** _ n. _

Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night alone, shaking and scared and haunted by something he couldn't put a name to: toothless grins and incurable diseases, his mother yelling for him, the feeling of falling.

It was worse after Neibolt, twenty seven years ago, when he was only thirteen and didn't know how to explain to his doctor that the reason he couldn't sleep was because a fucking clown almost killed them. Even now, almost half of them had to make up a bullshit excuse to their (now divorced) husbands and wives as to why they were suddenly leaving them.

The itching voice of his mother chastises him when he leaves Myra with two large suitcases, telling him he's making a mistake, and to not do that to her.

**him, ** _ pr. _

When he was thirteen, it was always from his peers, never Eddie that called him anything but his name: Trashmouth, Bucky Beaver, class clown, an array of names Henry liked to throw at him that Eddie didn't like to think about.

Over twenty seven years later, it's only Eddie's soothing voice: the love of his life, dear, sweetheart, _ my husband. _

**hypermnesia, ** _ n. _

No one else seems to find it weird that they forgot one another for twenty seven years, so why the fuck should Eddie? He's having fun - way more fun than he's had in a long time - drinking (despite his medication), and reminiscing about Henry Bowers (fuck him), and seeing just how old they've all gotten.

And then it hits him like a truck when Mike mentions Pennywise. The fucking clown, as Richie so eloquently puts it, and those memories are flooding back to him: defeating It twenty-seven years ago, breaking his arm, his mother and her placebos, as if he watched a movie from his own perspective.

From the looks on everyone else's faces, they seem to be thinking the same thing.

**immortal, ** _ adj. _

In some way, he knows it's impossible to cheat death, but he certainly feels like it's possible when he's kicking Pennywise. The others beat him and make him retreat back to the sewers. The feeling is indescribable; to face your childhood fears and physically destroy them.

He'll have the same feeling two more times over the course of his life, with the same vivacity as the first time: when he is still thirteen, blood dripping from his palm, holding hands with an equally bloodied-palm Richie; and when he is forty, leaning over Richie with a gleam in his eyes.

**intercostal, ** _ adj. _

Being paralyzed from the waist down isn't the only injuries Eddie sustained. Aside from the freakish, realistic nightmares about Pennywise, or the lasting trauma that one can only assume he's internalizing with each day not in therapy, his back and ribs _ fucking hurt. _

Turns out, being dragged upwards by a hole in his stomach wasn't only bad for his spine, but when Pennywise threw him against the rocks, it caused him to have four broken ribs and numerous other cracked ones. Somehow, the ribs hurt more than the hole in his abdomen, and they hurt even worse now that they're healing. Lifelong childhood trauma from a fucking space clown be damned, this is worse.

He asked Richie the first time to press a knuckle into the back of Eddie's shoulder, and it had helped the tiniest bit, but a small amount was better than nothing. The times afterward, Eddie didn't have to ask, and Richie would just know.

**jaculate, ** _ v. _

"It doesn't mean _ that, _ asshole," he told Richie, who had cackled like a madman when, in a stint of trying to sound smart, used it in a sentence to describe their fight with Henry Bowers.

"I jaculated in your mom last night!"

Eddie lurched forward and tackled him to the ground, wrestling on the cold ground of the clubhouse.

Stan rolled his eyes, and the others were silent as they watched this happen. They were used to it. "I'll jaculate a rock at you two if you don't stop and tell us why you brought us here," he said.

**jealous, ** _ adj. _

Richie, Eddie notices, knows a lot of people. Not just fans that he seems to remember the names of, but celebrities: ones that would make Eddie go wide-eyed and talk on about how much he loved or hated (much to Richie's amusement) their work.

But now, Eddie - from their table - watches a woman lean in and place her hand on Richie's arm, laughing and smiling at him. Maybe it shouldn't make Eddie's heart clench: he's followed "Trashmouth" for years, even his brief stints with past relationships, but this feels different. It _ should _feel different; they're married, for Christ's sake.

Richie must notice him staring because he looks up, says something to the woman, and walks across the room to where Eddie is seated. He sits down and leans in, his hand with the ring propping up his head.

"Hey, handsome. You here with someone?" he asks Eddie, who can't help but laugh despite himself.

"Why, yes, actually, but he left to go get some drinks and hasn't come back yet," Eddie responds, playing along.

"What sort of a man would do that to such a pretty guy like yourself?" Richie smiles at him, taking his hand. "Want to get out of here?"

Eddie smiles back. "I'm married, you know, and you're tempting me with an _ affair?" _

Richie's smile falters for a split second. "No, Eds, I'm actually asking. This whole event blows, bunch of stuck up pricks."

_ "You're _one of those stuck up pricks."

"Yeah, but at least I'm self aware."

Eddie pauses for a moment, thinking it over. Like Richie is prone to do, he senses what's wrong immediately.

"No, I'm not suggesting it because I thought you looked bored," says Richie. "I want to leave. Unless you want to stay, of course, but you _ did _look kind of out of your wits sitting there."

"Yeah, okay. Let's leave," Eddie says, backing his wheelchair out of the spot at the table. "I'm tired of listening to that guy a table over talk about his new fucking movie idea."

Richie swivels around to look at the guy Eddie's referring to, then looks back to him.

"Eds, sweetheart, _ that _guy is Adam Sandler."

**kakorrhaphiophobia, ** _ n. _

So maybe Eddie hates germs and bacteria and microbes, but that isn't the only thing he hates: he also hates the unknown, the idea that maybe (most likely) their plan is going to fail and they'd all wind up dead, buried beneath Neibolt, with no one to know where they are.

Somehow, he has a feeling that leaving will only make it worse, and that's what drives him to stick around despite everything. It doesn't stop him from making vague, uneasy comments about their plan every step of the way to Neibolt, though.

**kismet, ** _ n. _

The first time Beverly brought up their futures, he was curious.

The second time Beverly brings up their futures, he is afraid.

Eddie doesn't want to believe in fate, because a belief in fate means that his _ whole _destiny would be working, marrying Myra, then dying surrounded by people he hasn't talked to in thirty years.

Or maybe he doesn't want to believe in fate because fate is a jackass and _ yeah, _ he said it. If fate made them forget, then he didn't want to believe in it. If fate was to say 'no, the love of your life is _ not _Richie Tozier, and your best friends aren't the ones sitting in this very room,' then he didn't know what to believe.

**loser, ** _ n. _

It was the seven of them, thirteen, sitting in a clubhouse, wearing hairnets to protect them from spiders; naming the birds that hung around the Barrens; listing the stars in the sky; the corner table of the cafeteria.

It was them throwing rocks at Henry Bowers, and breaking an arm in an abandoned house, and standing up to his mother, and making Pennywise retreat back to the sewers.

It was them with emotions they would not be able to name until twenty-seven years later.

**lover, ** _ n. _

It is the seven of them, forty, carrying Eddie to the hospital as fast as they can, reeking of sewer water; coming and going in a blur during visiting hours; Richie kissing him in lieu of speaking and Eddie not even making a comment about brushing his teeth.

It is them standing up to their fears, and being paralyzed in an abandoned house, and divorcing Myra, and killing Pennywise.

It is them with feelings that are unspoken but known, the guiding force between the seven of them.

**malinger, ** _ v. _

Stan arrives in the middle of their argument about Beverly seeing their futures, and the room stops dead.

"Am I being fucking punked?" Richie asks, taking the words right out of his mouth.

"Stan?" Beverly asks, walking up to him and placing a hand on his face in a tender gesture.

"Yeah, it's me…" Stan says, walking into the room further with a bag. "Sorry I'm late."

There's the calm before the storm; the room, silent, before erupting into yelling.

"Patty said you fucking died!" Richie exclaims, and Stan smiles sheepishly at him.

"Yeah, well, I told her to tell you guys that. I did _ not _want to come here, but after some soul searching, it seems I had to," he says. "Losers stick together, right?"

Eddie could punch him out right then and there, knock that smile right off his face, but he doesn't because it's fucking _ Stan _and he's alive. Instead, he walks towards him and hugs him silently, and feels the others do the same.

And at that moment, Mike walks downstairs with Bill (who _ looks _ like he just smoked a bowl of weed but does not smell like it, and _ fuck _if Bill has weed, Eddie wants some as well), but they immediately stop when they see the man.

"What the hell?" asks Mike. "S-Stan?" asks Bill at the same time. 

The two nearly fling themselves off the stairs to join the group hug.

**multiloquent, ** _ adj. _

Richie rambled on when he was afraid - truly afraid. Sure, he would clam up when he was just scared, as they were all prone to do, but when he was about to start crying? Eddie couldn't get him to shut up.

Sometimes, that put them in perilous situations: with Bowers, with Pennywise, within the Losers Club itself, but Eddie knew Richie couldn't help it.

Eddie knows it's bad when his eyes are closing and Richie has a hand pressed to his cheek.

"Don't leave me again," he tells him, and Eddie is in and out of the world: much too cold for the summer, much too dark to be daytime.

"Don't fucking shake him too much, he told me before that can make the injuries worse," he hears. "Hey, watch his head, you almost made him hit the cave. Who knows what the doctors will say when there's fucking rocks and shit inside of his chest cavity? Oh, what's that? There's rocks instead of a heart? Who is he, the fucking _ Grinch?" _

"His heart wasn't a rock, it was just two sizes too small," Stan says, a few feet away from Eddie.

"Yeah, and m-my _ brain _ is going to be t-two sizes too small if-if I have to keep l-listening to you two," Bill adds.

There's a bout of silence which Eddie wants to ask, _ did everyone leave? _But then he hears grunting, the seven of them making their way out of Neibolt and the hot air hitting Eddie's face.

"Why the fuck did no one bring a car? Why'd you have to buy that piece of shit bike, anyway?" Richie asks, the sound of metal clattering.

"D-don't talk shit about Silver!"

"Guys!" Bev's voice cuts through their arguing, and the last thing Eddie hears before he passes out again is, "Shut the fuck up, _ please." _

**narcohypnia, ** _ n. _

Eddie doesn't feel a lot of things when he finally awakens. For one, he doesn't feel his legs. The other thing he doesn't feel is, well, a whole lot of pain.

"You're on a fuckton of painkillers, man," someone answers, a question he doesn't remember asking. "Just go back to sleep."

He's saying something, he doesn't remember what. But he does remember the man answering, "Yeah, I'll still be here."

**naupathia, ** _ n. _

As it turns out, Ben owns a goddamn Houseboat. Which _ would _be fun if Eddie didn't get seasick. Turns out, despite not being in a landlocked state, Eddie has never had the opportunity to get on a boat.

He thinks about his mother, and if she had known he would get seasick, they would have moved straight to Idaho or Kansas or some other state nowhere near water. Then, he gets sick again because thinking is making him sick.

"Sorry you aren't having a good time," Ben says, kindly, and Eddie believes it isn't just Ben saying that because Eddie _ definitely _has to have Richie by his side.

Eddie waves his hand, the other one covering his head dramatically as he lies in bed. "I'm having a fantastic time. Beautiful place you have here." He gestures vaguely to the room, pretending to have seen anything other than the side of the boat the entire time.

"Just call if you need anything," says Ben. "We're just a few feet away." He leaves and shuts the door behind him, and Eddie has to wonder if he told him that to be friendly, or if he's worried Eddie and Richie are going to jump each other's bones in their bedroom.

"You know," Richie starts, "they say the best way to cure seasickness is by fucking."

"They don't say that. The best way is with Scopolamine patches, but since I've never _ been _on a fucking boat, I don't have a prescription."

"So you don't want to have kinky boat sex?" Richie asks, crawling onto the bed beside Eddie, which just makes him more nauseated as the bed creaks. "Once in a lifetime opportunity."

Eddie groans, tries to open his eyes to look at the ceiling, and immediately feels sick again. "When the boat stops moving."

"It's not _ gonna _stop moving, Eds. It's a boat." Richie wiggles next to him and Eddie can feel it. "Let's rock the boat, right, baby?"

Eddie only makes a noise and rolls over onto his side.

**oath, ** _ n. _

During his twenty seven years he spent forgetting Derry, something about it remained: his promises. They never felt as real as a promise he made, and forgot, a vague amount of time ago. 

That meant that all of his relationships felt shallow, a belief that they would stay together forever; his marriage felt like a sham, like he _ had _to marry to catch up with his peers; and even though he would do it, the reports he had to do for work never felt like they had any meaning to them.

And when he gets that phone call from Mike, he has to wonder why he ever cared about any of that in the first place.

**obsequious, ** _ adj. _

It's weird to be looked after, but not in an overbearing way. Sure, there is Richie, who makes sure to change his bandages on the dot, or brings him water, or just generally sits with him doing nothing, but then there are the others.

Before Stan leaves back to his wife, he patted his hand down on Eddie's shoulder and smiled at him like a father smiling at his son who just made the baseball team.

Then it's Bev and Ben who like to double check that Eddie is doing okay, even though Richie is _ totally doing a great job, they just want to make sure. _

Then it's Bill who, in his own way, announced that he's divorcing Audra and going to be staying with Mike for awhile, as if Derry is some fun writer's retreat, but Eddie didn't comment. But Bill helps Eddie take his mind off the injuries and the pain by letting him (making him, Richie said) proofread his drafts. Eddie doesn't mind, and reading some of Bill's stuff before it publishes is exciting.

And finally it's Mike, who lets them stay as long as they want, despite him clearly getting antsy to leave and go down to Florida. He likes to make them coffee and runs travel itineraries for Florida through Eddie, who makes sure it's solid.

Whether or not that is a subtle sign from Mike telling them to _ get the hell out, _he doesn't know, but he takes it that way anyway, and a few weeks later he's on a plane back to Los Angeles to stay with Richie.

**parrhesia, ** _ n. _

"I saw what a cutie you were the first time I met you."

"Now I'm gonna have to kill this fucking clown."

"Look at me, Eds. Look at me."

"You guys are lucky you're not measuring dicks."

"Don't leave me again."

"You're a sloppy bitch."

"Eddie, I-" Richie starts, before getting cut off by Eddie kissing him.

**phantasm, ** _ n. _

Pennywise haunts him, and he's almost ashamed to admit it. Everyone else got their closure as they watched Mike reach in and grab It's beating heart, but Eddie was dying on the side, unable to see or hear anything but the blood pumping through his veins.

He wakes up gasping some nights, seeing Richie below him, blood splattering on his face, then immediately sees Richie above him, clean. On those nights, he'll hold Richie close as he lies on top of him, protecting Eddie.

On other nights, he'll see his mother, a vision asking why she couldn't save him, why he wasn't there for her when she died. On those nights, Eddie knows he can't go back to bed for fear of continuing the same dream, so Richie stays awake with him (against Eddie's penchant for a proper eight hours of sleep), rubbing circles into his back as they watch shitty late night talk shows.

**quiet, ** _ adj. _

Derry returned to normal fairly quickly after Henry Bowers was arrested, but Eddie's mind was still on full blast, and - much to his chagrin - so was his mother's.

She had exclaimed that they were moving in a fit of panic after the murders came to light, but missing children in Derry was no new thing, so Eddie wondered _ why now? _Was it his friends? Was it the town in general? Eddie wanted to get away from Derry as soon as possible, but on some level he thought that wouldn't be until college, where he could go wherever he wanted.

**querulous, ** _ adj. _

"This hospital food tastes like shit. Nothing but pudding and mashed potatoes," he tells Richie.

"Want me to bring you a burger? There's a fast food joint like, two minutes away."

"No, do you want me to get an infection because you brought outside food?"

**reman, ** _ v. _

Richie slapped Eddie's back and, for all sticks and stones that Richie was, the slap kind of hurt.

"Man up, Eds!" he exclaimed.

"You know we're walking right into our deaths right? Like, this is the end for all of us. Oh boy, dying in Neibolt because a disgusting fucking clown wanted to eat our faces!" Eddie said, but took a step further into Neibolt anyway.

Richie slaps Eddie's back and, because Richie has learned not to be a _ total _asshole, the slap doesn't hurt as much.

"Who defeated a clown when he was thirteen years old? Who stabbed Henry Bowers with his own knife? And who married his own mother?"

"I did."

**remain, ** _ v. _

He stays in Derry for longer than he really wants to. If he is being honest, he had expected the fight with Pennywise to take _ maybe _ an afternoon: they would go into Neibolt, rough him for old time's sake, and then he would be on a flight back to New York, to _ Myra, _in less than twelve hours.

Of course, nothing ever works out the way he expects, and Eddie's not sure whether or not he's happy about it.

**sangfroid, ** _ n. _

Because Richie is the one Eddie is in love with, he wants to say that Richie's the one who's the best under pressure. He is the one on stage, telling jokes in front of a thousand people, but, truthfully, Eddie thinks it's Mike.

Mike, who had to stay in Derry for most of his life to watch for signs that an evil clown might kill them again. Mike, who single-handedly (as Stan explained to him as Mike said it was a group effort) pulled Pennywise's heart from his chest. 

Sure, they were all brave in a way, but Mike was the one who remained calm even when they were all freaking out at the inn.

**sardonic, ** _ adj. _

"I d-don't think he's going to s-say yes," Bill says over a video chat with Richie and Eddie.

_ "I d-d-don't think he's going to s-s-say yes," _Richie mocks, pitching his voice higher. "Do you hear yourself?"

"B-But-"

"No, Richie's right," Eddie adds, earning a wide grin from said man. _ "Do _ you hear yourself? _ 'Oh, guys, Mike won't say yes to me moving with him to Florida even though I divorced my wife and he let me move in with him.' _Like, really, dude?"

Bill frowns, Eddie can see the telltale signs of the unchanging Derry Inn behind him. "How did you t-two know it was going to be all right?"

Eddie looks to Richie who looks back at him, before they turn back to the webcam, shrugging. "We just knew."

"See what I m-mean? Not f-fucking helpful, guys," he says. "I'm going to go ask Bev."

"Go ahead and try but she's going to say the same thing," Eddie says. "Oh, Ben and I _ knew _it was to be."

Richie presses a hand to his chest. "Even though I _ totally _thought Bill was the one who sent me that postcard." He cackles and Eddie slaps his arm lightly.

By the time they're done laughing, they notice Bill ended the call nearly four minutes earlier.

**taradiddle, ** _ n. _

Maybe Eddie isn't great at lying, but he knows when he has to tell a white lie.

Such as to his mother, telling her that, yes, he had taken his pills. Or to Myra, to tell her the same thing.

Or to his friends, even, though Eddie didn't like to lie to them.

"I'll be okay," he tells them when all he can see is the bright ceiling lights. His chest aches and he couldn't feel half of his body anymore. He wants to put his faith in the doctors.

**telic, ** _ adj. _

When he was in high school, he thought he would die in some sort of fantastical explosion, a dramatic death from food poisoning, Patient Zero for a new strain of the common cold. His friends would be by his side and his family, maybe he could picture a wife if he tried hard enough.

Now, he's not too sure, because he's bleeding out and sure, he's freezing, and his ribs ache, but he's dying underground in a cave he doesn't want to be in. What a way to go. His friends have left him to defeat It, his wife (his _ wife, _for God's sake) is back home in New York, and what else does he have?

He remembers that when someone is dying, they have a flashback through their life, and it causes Eddie to panic because he remembers a line from a poem he had to study in high school: _ This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper. _

Currently, his blood running through the sweater Richie gave him (and maybe Eddie imagines it, but it sure as hell smells like him) and onto his hands, curving around his wrist and wetting his palm. Eddie can't help but think that poem is true.

**unisonous, ** _ adj. _

"You two have turned into one another. I can't tell who's who anymore," Bev tells Richie and Eddie while they're all meeting up in Florida, down at Mike and Bill's house.

"We have fucking not," they say at the same time, proving her point as she cocks an eyebrow at them.

"You're like B-Bert and Ernie," says Bill.

"Which one am I?" Richie asks, causing everyone else in the room to immediately respond with _ Ernie. _ Richie grins at Eddie and elbows him. "That makes you Bert, then."

"Fuck off. I am _ not _Bert," Eddie responds, waving a finger in the air to punctuate each word.

"You don't have to get all defensive about it," Richie says, giving Eddie a shit-eating grin.

_ "Really?! _ We see Avenue Q one fucking time and…" He trails off when he sees the others giving him a similar grin. "I am _ not _Bert." He crosses his arms and promptly stops saying anything else, lest he dig himself a bigger hole.

**unbosom, ** _ v. _

So maybe coming out to Richie isn't in the way he imagined it. In fact, it's hardly said at all. A kiss on the lips in the hospital, divorcing Myra while he is _ still _in the hospital, a few makeout sessions with Richie back at the inn, and suddenly he's packing up all his things and moving across country to live with him.

It's on the plane, an ache in his ribs that doesn't seem to be healing anytime soon, that he just says it. Richie's asleep, a drip of drool out of his mouth with an eyemask on. He taps him on the shoulder and Richie jerks awake, peeling off the eyemask and wiping away the drool.

"Wha, huh? What's up, Eds? Finally decided you're actually down for joining the Mile High Club?"

Eddie rolls his eyes but restrains any further comment. "No, actually, um. I'm…" He mumbles the last word.

"What? You're what, dude? I can't hear you. My ears haven't popped yet."

"I said I'm _ gay," _he hisses out, probably too loud because he can see the person in the window seat look at him out of the corner of his eye.

"You decided to tell me this now?" Richie furls his brow. "After our twentieth make-out sesh, I kind of just assumed."

"Asshole." Eddie crosses his arms. So it's not as grand as he was expecting. "What about you?"

"Yes, Eddie, I am gay. I'm gonna have to write a condolence letter to your mother for stringing her along for all those years." Richie places the mask back over his eyes. "Is that all? I mean, thank you for telling me and all, but I just thought you were waking me up because you wanted to give each other Handy-J's in the bathroom."

He hears the person near the window clear his throat very loudly and Eddie has to turn away in embarrassment.

**valetudinarian, ** _ n. _

Eddie doesn't want to believe that he's still sick, but he also doesn't want to believe that all that medicine was for naught. Sure, he doesn't have asthma (as Richie had told him, ripping the inhaler out of his hands), but the gummy vitamins were healthy (and maybe he could even insist Richie start taking a few. How he hasn't gotten scurvy yet remains a mystery), and _ yes, _he's taking three T3s a day because his fucking ribs ache and there is a hole in the middle of his abdomen.

When he's well enough, he starts to work out his upper body with weights (which, surprisingly, Richie owned). However, with only the slightest influence from Richie, he starts eating things he would never allow himself to eat less than a year ago for fear of getting sick: processed sugars, soy, gluten, and _ god _how he's missed pasta.

He wants to say Richie's a bad influence on him, but if anything, it's making him happier. He still works out and tries to include at least a cup of fruits and vegetables each meal, but if that cup happens to be on top of a pizza, so be it.

**versatile, ** _ adj. _

As he's learned, there's not many things to do when he's able to work from home and not have to commute forty minutes one way. He's learning to cook, working his way around the kitchen and Richie's surprisingly full pantry. He cooks dinners and sometimes breakfast. He'll drop a lunch off to Richie if in town and free for five minutes.

On a call with Beverly, she teaches him how to sew small things: bags and shirts, how to patch his sweaters, which he picks up surprisingly quickly.

Bill likes him to edit and even offers to send him a few hundred dollars for his time, which Eddie refuses. Apparently, Eddie has a strong disposition for pointing out flaws in characters or plotholes.

Stan sometimes would video chat and they would go on long rants about their job, working in similar offices, different spaces. Stan complains to him about another accountant in his firm that he constantly has to fix the mistakes of, and Eddie complains about the others' unfinished work despite the deadline being a day ago.

**want, ** _ v. _

The word Eddie would use when he first saw Richie in a suit after they arrived in Los Angeles, or the word he would use when Richie would shove a hand through his own hair, or when they would wake up in the morning with bed hair.

And Eddie would realize that he doesn't need to want, when he already has it.

**wanton, ** _ adj. _

It's truly cruel, Eddie thinks, that the definition of _ wanton _means such opposite things.

Pennywise's inhumane killings, or being on the receiving end of Henry Bowers, or the general way a lot of their parents treated them.

On the other hand, it meant lustful, exciteful. The way Richie digs his fingers into Eddie's back when they kiss, like he'll disappear; the way he arches his back when he comes into Eddie's palm.

**xanax, ** _ n. _

Beverly tells them over a phone call that after a few weeks of therapy, she came back with a prescription for Xanax, and it has helped a lot: the terrors at night have gone away, and she feels much calmer.

Bill is the first to agree that they probably _ all _fucking need therapy, but how the hell would they explain Pennywise to the doctor?

"I told him about my father," she says. "He didn't need to know It."

Eddie thinks they probably all have enough trauma even without mentioning the fucking clown or Neibolt, and he makes a mental note to schedule an appointment.

**xiphoid process, ** _ n. _

Eddie learned many names for different bones that It's claw missed while he was in the hospital. The Xiphoid process was one of them: small and meaningless but for some reason, he still feels glad that it's still there.

**yearn, ** _ v. _

He knows that Richie has to tour, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. He phones Eddie everyday after the show, telling him how it went, if anyone heckled him, if he met someone famous that Eddie would know.

Richie, in a later timezone, would fall asleep while they were still on the phone, and Eddie would fall asleep five states away to the sound of his snoring.

**yell, ** _ v. _

After Neibolt, after Eddie had arrived safely back at the Derry Inn with everyone else, piling out of their separate vehicles, he celebrates.

Richie pulls out his wheelchair and helps him into it and Eddie raises his arms in the air, looking between the other six.

"We fucking did it!" he exclaims, excitedly. "We fucking did it! Fuck you, clown! Fuck you, Derry!" He flips off the sky.

He sees the others look around curiously before smiling, pointing their own middle fingers to the sky.

"Yeah! We fucking did it!" they yell.

**zealous, ** _ adj. _

Eddie's in love with Richie, but he realized it way sooner than this very moment: as in, the moment where Richie pulls out a ring while they're sitting side by side on the couch, watching a shitty comedy together.

"Eds?" he asks, as Eddie is finger deep in the popcorn. He turns to look at him and nearly has a heart attack right then and there. "I'm so fucking in love with you. Will you marry me?"

And Eddie freezes, a deer caught in the headlights. "Fuck?" is all he can manage to say.

"I mean, we have been doing that already." No one says anything. "You're really starting to freak me out here. Please say something."

"I look like shit. My fingers are still in this fucking popcorn." Eddie jerks his hand away from the bowl, causing popcorn to fly everywhere around the room. He wipes his hands quickly on his pants. Richie is still holding the ring out in front of him. "Did you just fucking propose to me during a Seth Rogan movie? I'm pretty sure that's a crime in this state."

"Is that a yes? I kind of have to know here, really busting my balls."

"Yes, idiot," he answers, leaning in to kiss Richie.

**zenith, ** _ n. _

Eddie would think this is it: the eight of them (including Patty, whom he finally got to meet) sitting in Mike and Bill's house for a well deserved rest and relaxation. Richie had even managed to talk him out of taking his work phone _ just in case. _

He's sitting on one of the chairs by the poolside as Mike and Bill dive bomb in and land near Bev, already sitting on Ben's shoulders to play chicken. Richie takes a running start, falters last moment, and belly flops into the pool, spraying water up near Eddie. Patty and Stan stay out of the water because, as Eddie has learned, they were more inclined to drink wine poolside rather than actually go in.

Eddie watches Richie sweep a long wave of water towards the other four, the sun catching the gleam of his ring. He must realize Eddie's watching him because he turns around, catches Eddie's eye, and swims over to the edge.

"So, come here often, handsome?" he asks Eddie, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> more time skips than the goldfinch (2019)
> 
> This is based off: David Levithan - The Lover's Dictionary  
This is also unedited to high hell because I'm reckless


End file.
